We are not long past the 10th anniversary of the Wen Ho Lee case, an incident that for Asian Americans is comparable to the Rodney King beating that eventually sparked the Los Angeles riots in the early 1990s. Lee was a physicist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who was, falsely it turned out, accused of espionage.

He was arrested in December 1999 and, after nine months in solitary confinement, the government dropped its case, and then-President Bill Clinton issued a public apology.

It's an incident that certainly touched Ray Arthur Wang, who called it "one of the highest-profile civil rights injustices in modern American history." He has prepared a short film, "The Profile," a fictional film that commemorates the case as part of the 12th annual California Independent Film Festival in Orinda.

"My father was a high-energy physicist at the Lawrence Livermore Lab, where he experienced major discrimination," Wang said by phone from his residence in Livermore. "I know what it's like to be in Wen Ho Lee's shoes."

CAIFF is a festival that has spent most of its dozen years of existence in Livermore. So Wang wanted to world premiere "The Profile" at his hometown festival. (The festival moved to Orinda this year.)

He hired professional actors and crew - star Long Nguyen is a Hollywood veteran most noted for his role in Oliver Stone's "Heaven and Earth" - insisted on shooting the film in 35mm instead of video. It's in black and white with a distinctive yellow tint, lending the shadowy scenes of arrest, persecution and the interrogation a noirish, nightmarish feel.

"I think the case is very important to Asians and Asian Americans because it really reminded us we still are looked upon as foreigners," Wang said. "I'd like to think of myself as an optimist, but I am a realist, and I think it will always be that way. ... Asian people need a voice to help them stand up for themselves."

Wang studied engineering himself and was a part-time professor of electrical engineering. But his heart is in film, and after a series of no-budget shorts, he's getting more ambitious.

After the premiere in Orinda, Wang is taking the film to an Academy Awards-qualifying festival in Athens, Ohio, then the New Mexico Filmmakers Showcase in Albuquerque. That's pretty close to Los Alamos, where the Wen Ho Lee case went down.